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Over the two years covered in the explosive 60 Minutes/Washington Post joint-investigation “Ex-DEA Agent: Opioid Crisis Fueled by Drug Industry and Congress,” there was no coverage by any major TV news outlets of the four versions of the bill or its final signature by President Obama.
In a year of depressing stories emanating from Washington, the sheer scope of DC culpability in a scandal that helped fuel the greatest drug epidemic in American history is stunning. As Big Pharma and Congress moved four versions of the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act forward, from the first House version in February 2014 to Obama’s signature of the fourth and final version in April 2016, TV news media was silent. There were no stories on the actual negotiations, on Big Pharma’s role in creating the crisis, or the lobbyist rationale for defanging the DEA.
President Obama signed the legislation quietly behind closed doors, a clear red flag in Washington. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and pharma-pliant DEA Chuck Rosenberg played along and both houses of Congress approved the final versions with unanimous consent. Big Pharma and its army of lobbyists made a full-court press over many years and their efforts were rewarded handsomely. According to the Washington Post "John Mulrooney, the chief DEA administrative law judge, has been documenting the falling number of immediate suspension orders against doctors, pharmacies and drug companies. That number has dropped from 65 in fiscal year 2011 to six so far this fiscal year, according to the DEA. Not a single order has targeted a distributor or manufacturer since late 2015.”
All of them have blood on their hands.
The final versions of the bill were approved in the House and Senate with unanimous consent. There is little daylight between the Democratic and Republican parties when it comes to Big Pharma, which contributes to the campaigns of candidates on both sides of the aisle. When the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act was being negotiated from 2014 to 2016, there was ample documentation available to Congress members on the drug industry fueling opioid addiction.
As reported in excruciating detail in “The Family that Built an Empire of Pain,” Patrick Radden Keefe’s recent New Yorker article chronicling Purdue Pharma and the founding Sackler family, Purdue senior executives were convicted and heavy fines were paid as far back as 2006. OxyContin and other opioid-based pharmaceuticals fueled the staggering growth in pain medication sales and abuse, behind one of the most aggressive marketing efforts in pharmaceutical history. The link between prescribing opioid painkillers and the opioid crisis was undeniable. And everyone in Washington knows it.
When they do report on drugs, TV news media spend more time on Prince and celebrity deaths than on drug policy that affects millions. More time on state marijuana laws than far more deadly federal opioid-prescription legislation. More time discussing how El Chapo escaped from prison than how to put devious prescription distributors and pharmaceutical drug-dealers behind bars. More time on how to clean up the mess than on how to stop the flow. And with drug commercials a mainstay of TV broadcast and cable news programming, it is easy to understand why the topic rarely surfaces.
Andrew Tyndall, who tracks ABC, NBC and CBS Evening News programs on Tyndall Reports.com, kindly provided search results for his narcotics category and returned 149 stories on the three networks from Feb. 1, 2014, to May 1, 2016.
Many stories each on Bill Cosby, El Chapo, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Prince; many gut-wrenching tales of addicts, families, first responders, communities, courts and police battling the epidemic. And a whole bunch of stories on medical marijuana and pot legalization. But not one story on pharmaceutical drug policies or laws enacted at the root of the opioid crisis.